Quotes on Politics

There is no more great men; there is only great committees.

Party is the madness of many for the gain of a few.

Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it.

There are no personal sympathies in politics.

The State calls its own violence, law; but that of the individual, crime.

The question of questions for the politicians should ever be-What type of social structure am I tending to produce? But this is a question he never entertains.

A radical is a man with both feet firmly planted-in the air.

If one man offers you democracy and another offers you a bag of grain, at what stage of starvation do you prefer the grain to the vote?

Maybe a nation that consumes as much booze and dope as we do and has our kind of divorce statistics should pipe down about "character issues."

Are you better off today than you were four years ago?

In America you can go on the air and kid the politicians, and the politicians can go on the air and kid the people.

No matter how their leaders may have tried to skimp on money, no one, not even the politicians, who talked themselves red, white, and blue in the face, skimped on effort.

Of all kinds of credulity, the most obstinate is that of party-spirit; of men, who, being numbered, they know not why, in any party, resign the use of their own eyes and ears, and resolve to believe nothing that does not favor those whom they profess to follow.

I hate all bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people.

Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous or when they are most luxurious-they are conservatives after dinner.

I despise all adjectives that try to describe people as liberal or conservative, rightist or leftist, as long as they stay in the useful part of the road.

When a politician is in opposition he is an expert on the means to some end; and when he is in office he is an expert on the obstacles to it.

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.

A politician... one that would circumvent God.

Sure, losing an election hurts, but I've experienced worse. And at an age when every day is precious, brooding over what might have been is self-defeating. In conceding the 1996 election, I remarked that "tomorrow will be the first time in my life I don't have anything to do." I was wrong. Seventy-two hours after conceding the election, I was swapping wisecracks with David Letterman on his late-night show.

Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy.